And cavewomen, of course, because although the notion of gender equality wasn't fully formed during the pre-historic period, a cave needed a Ma and a Pa if it was to be properly populated.

In The Croods, the 3D animation currently enjoying its third week at the top of the UK box office chart, those two parental roles are taken by Nicholas Cage and Catherine Keener, who voice the characters Grug and Ugga Crood. Their fur-wearing offspring are Eep, Thunk and Sandy, and completing the family unit is Gran Crood, who at 45 is considered ancient.

Through the course of their adventures the Croods discover fire (courtesy of Eep's brainbox boyfriend), invent shoes, fight off attacks by Macawnivores and Piranhakeets – caveman-eating parrots – and find a promised land of sorts.

It's all fiction, adapted for DreamWorks by John Cleese and Kirk DeMicco from an un-made Ardman Animation project. But the real cave-dwellers of pre-history were equally inventive and bold and equally deserving of our respect, as shown in David Hendy's 30-part radio series, Noise: A Human History, which is currently on BBC Radio 4.

In episode one the presenter was joined in the cave of Arcy-sur-Cure by Professor Iegor Reznikoff, an expert in ancient music. Using his own voice he demonstrated that as well as painting on the walls of their caves, the real-life Croods used the acoustic properties of their homes to make music. Who needs an iPod?

A recently opened exhibition at the British Museum in London – Ice Age Art: Arrival Of The Modern Mind – shows that during the last ice age there were mastercraftsmen at work making not only naturalistic images but abstract representations of their surroundings. Like inventing shoes, that's clever stuff.